Internet node: Machine Naming Convention

A node is the name of a computer. The computer may be a PC, a workstation, a mini, a mainframe, or a supercomputer. An Internet node can be any machine in the world, as long as it is on the Internet network, which NRC is a member (the Internet is discussed in the Networking section of Book II: Advanced Introduction).

The convention for a node on the Internet network is:

machine.section.organization.type_of_organization

where type_of_organization may be edu, mil, gov, com, org, net or, outside of the United States, country_code.

As of 2001, type_of_organization also includes aero, biz, coop, info, museum, name and pro. The networking section (part II of the course notes) will explain in more details what they are.

At the National Research Council, a node is defined as

machine.institute.nrc.ca

The Research Computing Support Group's SGI O$^2$ is nickel.sao.nrc.ca for the outside world, nickel.sao for people within NRC and nickel for people within RPSO/SCSG.